


little cliches and the odd ills of the galaxy

by jazzfic



Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: F/M, Gen, I Tried, Post-Season/Series 01, a rare fic emerges
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:54:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23591185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzfic/pseuds/jazzfic
Summary: In which Agnes takes to exercising out her frustrations, and hits a slight corporeal roadblock.
Relationships: Agnes Jurati/Cristóbal Rios
Comments: 21
Kudos: 36





	little cliches and the odd ills of the galaxy

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, it's been a hundred years between writing, but I kind of love this show, so in my isolation I rolled my sleeves up and attempted some sentences. Judge their coherence as you will.

“One, two, three...”

There were fifteen steps in the narrow set of stairs leading from _La Sirena’s_ bridge down to the mess. Thirty on a round trip, sixty twice again; provided you were alone, that turned a more or less functional ten minutes of repetitions into a fairly decent workout.

“...seven, eight, nine...”

Agnes, though, was coming to find that the art of putting into place a bandaid exercise regime in the confines of a smallish but nimble freighter designed for short to mid range haulage wasn’t exactly easy. And on a ship that, as a fun sort of surprise in the same way a mild electrical shock was a surprise, happened to do a mean sideline in dogfights with some pretty nasty sorts –- well, it was near to impossible. The old Starfleet regimen of churning out a crop of full and fit cadets might have been the bane of her days at the Academy, but at least in that very long ago life there had been a sharp-eyed Vulcan instructor overseeing the gruelling task of maintaining a healthy cardiovascular system in the far flung nothing of space. Here, there was just Agnes. Tired, mentally overwrought, and physically under-stretched. And her knees were really, really not liking these stairs today. 

She could feel a line of sweat draw slowly down her back as she slogged downwards, again, hands hovering over the chrome rails. She puffed out a breath. This was number... no, she’d lost count. Whatever. It was number whatever and a lot of pain. At the base of the stairs she counted to ten in between laboured breaths, jogging on the spot before pivoting and starting the ascent again with a fresh burst of speed.

“...thirteen, fourteen...”

“Agnes--”

Forward motion and the sudden urge to lie down on the grating forever propelled her off the the top step just in time to see the shape of a person come into view. The sound that she made – a wholly undignified squeak, if one were to examine it academically – was immediately muffled in a warm and very solid chest that was suddenly, if temporarily, her entire world view. Had she not been wholly out of breath to register anything besides the kiss of wool on her lips, she might have been alarmed at the fact that her heart was beating its way fully out of her ribcage, before realising that the rumble she could feel in syncopation with said heartbeat belonged to Rios. 

Rios. And he was laughing.

“ _Fifteen!_ ” she puffed out. She sagged a little then snapped to and smacked a hand against his chest. “Cris!”

“I’m sorry.” He was still much too amused for her out of breath liking. 

“God! You wouldn’t be laughing if I’d bounced off of you and gone cartwheeling back into the food replicators.”

“Agnes, I swear I did not see you.”

“You mean you hadn’t noticed this blazing red face and me huffballing it like a hamster on a wheel for the last thirty minutes? Okay, maybe not thirty minutes, it was more like three if we’re being honest, but it feels like thirty... ugh.” 

Rant over, she staggered to the bridge and fell into the nearest chair. She leant her head back and let her eyes close, feeling the quiet static hum of the stabilisers pull her down, down into the softness. Oh, it was nice to just stop. What was she trying to prove, anyway? That she could outrun whatever it was out there? Like goddamn hell she could, like any of them could. Rag-tag bunch of misfits, law breakers, murderers, cast out and running out of favours, the lot of them. 

Slowly, Agnes opened her eyes. She looked up, to where Rios was hovering. “What?”

“I kind of need to sit there.”

“Ooh, that’s why this thing is so comfy. Perfect ergonomics for piloting, right?”

She didn’t move. The adrenaline was still pulsing through her from before, but slowing now. She met his eyes instead, let her gaze flitter down. His hands were set lightly at his hips like a teapot, one hip jutted out a little in that way he liked to stand, his fussy attempt at casual not-caring in the form of a person who she was beginning to understand cared entirely too much. That soft navy sweater was thinning at the elbows; she imagined it had been pulled and worn and washed many times. What sort of odd, solitary life had he and his holograms led before she’d barrelled in on the retired admiral’s coattails, Agnes wondered. 

Rios half sighed and folded his arms. He was waiting for her to act, she realised. She could almost see the push-pull inside his head, the duelling thoughts as he fought with how best to counter her, which from to take on Agnes and this flash of playful insolence. Would it be as the introverted oddity, the Rios with eyes cast away in tired acceptance the first time she’d beamed aboard, when she’d been so carelessly bright in the bustle of a new adventure. Would it be the later, softer kindness of when she’d gotten to know him, a hand pulling her up and away gently, mindful of the work needed to be done, the ship and its cargo and crew in his care.

Or maybe it would be the Rios whose room she slipped into every second night, whose hand she held sometimes under the corner table in the mess, when she naively wondered if Raffi or any of the others noticed, or cared, or if they knew her better than she blushed to think; how if she braved to ask they would tell her that these things happen, that people drift into each other’s wake out here and oftentimes come stuck, happily and without fanfare. How it just was.

Agnes reached up and Rios took her outstretched hands and she let him tug her to her feet. “Something like that,” he said.

She pulled her fingers through his, taking care as she stood not to touch anywhere else. She looked at their hands and felt his eyes on the crown of her head, and wrinkled her mouth into a shape that was partly grossed out at the sweaty hairs plastered to her forehead, and partly relieved at the chasteness of this interaction. She would like to think that she was capable of a blinding hot romance, intense and heavy fuelled as a nova star, were she anyone else, were Rios anyone else, were they both not tired and a little bit fed up with the ills of the galaxy. 

That would be an awful cliche, she thought. Not that they weren’t edging towards one of a sorts already. 

“Okay,” she said, stepping back. There was enough heat still in the air and in the way his eyes slipped just a small ways down her body, that the temptation of doing something just a little burning, just a little sweet and fast to be witnessed by the expanse out there and an entirely empty bridge in here, had her turning tail and double-timing it back to the stairs like a woman in need of... well, something. An awful, awful cliche indeed.

She was halfway down and safely out of sight when she heard him call out, softly and with a grin, “Run safe,” and without thinking Agnes spun against the rail and stuck a middle finger in the air. 

“Try and catch me next time,” she shot back, laughing.

When she turned around she found Raffi standing by the replicators, coffee cup in hand, whose half awake expression bore a look as if Agnes had done little else but grow twin heads. 

“Look at you, running round the place as chirpy as shit. What’s your secret?”

Agnes shrugged gamely, fanning herself as if to make a charade out of it, before she noticed the glint in Raffi’s eyes and the smirk she hid in her coffee, and decided it was best to say nothing.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[PODFIC] little cliches and the odd ills of the galaxy, by jazzfic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23681893) by [Thimblerig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig)




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